Movies come and go in the theaters all the time. Recently, the amount of time that they spend
with a theatrical release is less and less.
Sometimes this is due to the amount of movies that get released in a
given window. The more movies that there
are, the easier it is for a less successful one to get pushed out. Other times, the movies do so terribly that
they get pulled quicker than they otherwise would have. If they aren’t going to make money, what’s
the point of showing them? Theater
owners aren’t going to want to play movies for an empty theater.
The premature removal of a movie from theaters can lead to
many people not seeing a movie when it gets released. They either didn’t make it out to the theater
before it was taken away, or they put other movies ahead of it and hadn’t yet
gotten around to it. Usually this is the
case for the bad movies that go to theaters.
Movies such as The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, or Winter’s
Tale get passed over upon their initial release. The few people who do see them remember
them. And they tell everyone else.
This is the kind of stuff that leads to a movie having a
cult following. The theatrical release
doesn’t do much to make a movie popular.
It’s the word of mouth that comes from the few people who saw it that
does. They tell other people what the
movie is like. Other people get the urge
to see it for themselves. The following
begins. People see it, they enjoy it,
and they tell more people. A movie that
wasn’t a big hit because of the quality then becomes a popular movie among people
who like movies that are “so bad they’re good.”
“It’s the worst movie
of the year, hands down.” --
@RealJDDuran
I bring this all up because of the already mentioned movie
Winter’s Tale. It’s a movie that I have
seen picking up a following amongst my Twitter circle. When it first came out, I remember almost
nobody wanting to see it because it looked atrocious. I also remember the few people who saw it
talking about how crazy the movie was.
There was apparently a flying horse in there. And Russell Crowe was apparently a
standout. It wasn’t convincing enough to
get me to go to the theater to see it. I
waited until it came out on video.
Winter’s Tale was included in the Sunday “Bad” Movies
schedule for the August 10th post.
In the nearly four months since I saw the movie, I have been a strong
advocate of getting people to watch it.
I have joined in with that cult following for the movie. I want people to see how insane that Winter’s
Tale is. It’s not just a romantic
movie. It’s also a fantasy movie. It covers a long span of time, it deals with
demons and spirit horses and miracles, and it is downright ludicrous in what
happens. Winter’s Tale is filled with
elements that need to be seen to be believed.
After first watching Winter’s Tale, I would tell everyone to
watch the movie. If they were
considering it in even the smallest amount, I would toss my entire weight
behind it in order to convince them that they should watch it. I wanted to share the bizarre movie with as
many people as I possibly could. We
would all know what made the movie as strange of a movie as it was. I would have people to talk to about what I
had seen in it. I was trying to do a
public service of getting people to watch one of the craziest movies of the
year while also trying to get more people in my circle to be able to talk about
the movie.
There were other people out there that I saw reacting to
Winter’s Tale in a similar way. We
didn’t want to be alone in having seen it.
We didn’t want to love the lunatic movie by ourselves. We wanted everyone to love what the movie
was. It is a movie about love and our
love for how bad it is was driving the movie into the hearts of more
people. We were spreading the miracle of
Winter’s Tale to the masses.
Yet the movie still hasn’t reached mainstream
popularity. It has remained under the
radar for most of the movie watching audience, with us few people crying out
about how unique it is. The vast
majority of people still have not watched Winter’s Tale. And that’s a shame because there are few
movies like it. It is an absurd movie
that stands on its own amongst everything that has been released in 2014. It has a cult following of devoted fans. If you can call them fans. But they’re people who love it for what it
is: pure insanity in film form.
And with that, I move onto the notes:
- The first note is obviously going to be a link to the original post for Winter’s Tale.
- You can find JD Duran at @RealJDDuran.
- An actor named Roman Blat was in Winter’s Tale. He was also in New Year’s Eve.
- There is another post this week where I answer some questions about the Sunday “Bad” Movies that were submitted by readers, suggestors, and/or followers of the Twitter account.
- What are your thoughts about Winter’s Tale? Have you seen it? Did you enjoy it? How do you feel about cult followings for movie? Do the fans get annoying? If you have any thoughts related to this post, you can drop them in the comments below.
- I mentioned The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure near the beginning of the post. I’d also like to say that it was the movie I rewatched for the first anniversary of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
- If you have a movie you would like to suggest for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can leave it in the comments. You can also contact me on Twitter, or email me at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com.
- Next week’s movie will be Elves, the 1989 horror movie. It can be found on YouTube. We’re into the month of Christmas movies. And yeah, I’ll put the next movie in the post now. Not that anyone asked.
- Thanks for sticking around for two years. Here’s to some more!
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